Simple and easy improvements can be made to make your home more energy efficient and comfortable. But having an eco-friendly home means small changes and habits need to be made around the household. If you want to protect the environment and reduce your household expenses, then it’s time to make your home environmentally friendly. Make your home eco-friendly by changing certain aspects of your home such as energy saving, water efficiency, home management and building materials.

By going through some energy saving plans and ideas, you can dramatically decrease your energy bill by hundreds of dollars annually. Introducing energy efficient products into the home such as quality insulation and solar water heating systems can productively lower your power bill, as a big part of the power bill goes towards heating homes and heating water. To further lower your power usage bill, start using energy efficient lights and lamps, as these can cut out excess power usage.

It is both easy and important to conserve water in the home, as water is a valuable and necessary resource in New Zealand. There are products out there that can help save hundreds of litres of water a year such as rain water tanks and grey water recycling systems. Recycling water can be done when flushing toilets, watering the garden and other outdoor use.

Changing the habits in your home can help make a serious difference when it comes to making our earth be environmentally friendly. Caring for our earth can be as simple as recycling recyclable materials and composting food scraps. You can help rid the world of using dangerous products that contain harsh chemicals by indicating a demand for green products – this can be done by only buying environmentally friendly products.

Whether you are building new or making changes to an existing home, there are plenty of options to making your home eco sustainable. Having a eco sustainable house can make your home not only more comfortable, but can also increase your property value. Flooring, windows and paint choices are going to make the difference between having an eco sustainable home or not.

Learn more about Eco-Friendly Homes. Stop by the Heart of Green site where you can find out all about Energy Efficient Tips & Products and what it can do for you.

Don’t believe for a minute that the only way to save energy in big ways at home is to make large-scale renovations and changes. Instead, look to the small when trying to create a more eco friendly home. There are many different ways to save a lot of energy that are often overlooked and which cost little to no money. All it takes is a lifestyle change, or changing the way something is done. Here are six energy saving tips that each cost less than $50 to implement–and some are even free.

1) Energy saving light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL’s) are an increasingly popular lighting option for people looking to save a lot of energy. Each bulb can save you up to 70% of the energy used by a regular incandescent light bulb. That adds up fast over time, especially if magnified by having multiple CFL’s anywhere in your house that needs a good amount of light. Prices on these bulbs have also gone down drastically, making them an even better value for your dollar–especially because they last many times longer. In future years you can expect to see other technologies hit the market, like LED light bulbs, but it will probably be a while before they get cheap enough to make them worthwhile. For now, CFL’s are definitely the way to go. Cost: can be found for $1.50 or less per bulb.

2) Weatherstripping. While upgrading an old boiler or air conditioning unit will certainly save you a lot of energy, don’t even bother doing that until you think about weatherstripping first. If you don’t plug up every hole in the house through which heat or cooled air is escaping then you are simply throwing money down the drain. Before planning for that appliance upgrade, grab some weatherstripping materials at your hardware store and stuff them into every crack that’s causing your interior home air to escape. Cost: less than $50 for just about any piece of weatherstripping material you would need.

3) Lower/Raise the thermostat: Why heat or cool your home when you don’t really need it? Working hours and night time are two great times when you could lower the temperature in winter and raise it in summer without causing any inconvenience. Having a programmable thermostat helps, but isn’t necessary. Lowering your thermostat in winter by 10 degrees, for example, can cut your heating bill by up to 20%. Cost: $0.

4) Reduce your hot water use. Showering and laundry are two of the biggest hot water hogs, amounting to hundreds of gallons of water every month. That puts a big energy strain on your hot water heater. Turning down the dial on it to about 110 degrees helps a lot. You can also be more proactive by reducing your showering time and especially by washing laundry in cold water only. You can use laundry detergent specially made for cold water that gets your clothes just as clean as if you had used hot water. The more you do this, the more you save. Cost: $0.

5) Turn off your computer. People interested in saving energy often go to all sorts of lengths to make their homes more energy efficient, but they totally forget about the one or more computers lying around. Often these are left on all night and during times when nobody is using them. That wastes a lot of energy, since computer power packs often use up 300 watts or more. While the desire to avoid re-starting the computer is understandable, you can avoid that and save energy simply by putting your computer to “sleep.” That’s a special mode available on Windows machines that mimics turning off the computer but a tiny trickle of energy remains for memory, allowing you to power back up immediately to what you were doing last. Search out that “sleep” feature and give your computer a rest. Cost: $0.

6) Try a programmable timer switch. Ever hear of these devices? A programmable timer switch takes the place of an ordinary light switch, but allows you to digitally program the times you want that light or associated appliance to turn on and off. You no longer have to worry about forgetting to leave the lights on at night, simply let the programmed switch do it for you. Keeping the lights turned off when you don’t need them saves you a good deal of money. Cost: $49 for the Leviton 6124h Decora programmable timer switch that lets you program “on” and “off” settings in thirty-minute increments.

These six easy steps towards a more eco friendly home are inexpensive to implement but will yield almost instant savings of energy and money. Try them today!

Joe Barrios is an expert on eco friendly home and garden products. Check out his website at EcoVillageGreen.com to read more about the Leviton 6124h Decora programmable timer switch and other green home product ideas.